THE SENTINELS OF BELLUM
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He checked in on Jonathan Cage at the house after leaving the gala, wanting to make sure he’d gotten home safely. Thankfully, he had. Once he’d told Jonathan that his would be killers or kidnappers were now in police custody, he took his leave.
For a moment, he contemplated taking a cab home but the fight with the thugs had filled him with so much excitement and adrenaline that he decided he would much rather just run the distance or at the very least, run until he’d exhausted himself.
Perhaps the run would make it much less annoying how things had seemed promising at the gala. He’d actually expected a proper challenge from the thugs, hoped that they’d serve to make the night interesting.
Sure, they spiced things up a little; but spice and of itself a dish does not make, without a main dish of action, his hunger would be unfulfilled.
So run he did, his smile slowly turning to an expression of dullness.
He ran, cutting through alleys and roads under construction, leaping from wall to wall whenever the opportunity presented itself. It was only when a warning flashed on his HUD, that he slid to a halt, his face changing to one of anticipation.
A proximity alert; well, maybe the universe decided to send him a main dish for delivery he chuckled in his head.
He looked around at the environment. The only structure nearby was a construction site, an incomplete one at that. And he couldn’t detect any movement. But still, he decided to check it out. It was unlikely that his glasses had sent him a false alarm.
He drew in a deep breath and started walking toward the construction site.
The closer he got, the louder the crackling in his ears and the worse his HUD glitched until finally, he had to get rid of both the sunglasses and the earbuds.
“Well, perhaps the hope’s alive for an exciting night after all,” he murmured to himself.
He walked straight to the middle of the construction site, keeping his eyes peeled for any sort of danger at all. Without his glasses detecting danger for him, he’d need to be extra focused. He spotted a steel rod some distance away and walked toward it. He crouched by the rod, placed a finger against it and whispered: “Resonate.”
At once, his skin started to harden, becoming denser, stronger. If anyone did try to launch a surprise attack on him here, he’d be able to take it.
He continued through the construction site, calling out to see if anyone would respond. But no one did. He’d just about given up and decided it must have been a false alert. Suddenly, a brilliant light emanated from the center of the construction site, the intensity of the light blinded him momentarily.
An alien warmth emanated from light: the sort, the sort of warmth that probably would have burnt had he not taken on the properties of steel earlier. Once the warmth abated, he heard metallic movement but he couldn’t exactly make out where it was coming from since his vision was still blurred from the bright light earlier.
He blinked hard several times in a bid to get his vision to clear and once it did, he realized there was nothing but fog up ahead. Wait, no, it wasn’t fog. It was smoke. Smoke was billowing right out of the ground in the center of the construction site, rapidly fogging up the air around so he could barely make out anything. He knew there was someone or something in the smoke. He could hear movement.
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“Who’s there?” he demanded. “If this is supposed to be some sort of ambush, I should warn you, I’m not going to hold back, I’ve been itching to let loose all evening.”
There was still no response, but he could hear movement.
He growled and clenched his fists firmly, starting to get a bad feeling about this. Something felt different.
And then came the whirring sound as blue light glowed out of the smoke. He felt the heat and his eyes went wide at once. He wasn’t quick enough to get out of the blast’s path so he shielded himself with both hands, which was a bad idea since he felt a kind of pain he’d never felt before as the blast sent him flying through the air.
He crashed into a crane and dropped to the ground with a groan, his hands burning intensely. He rose slowly and glanced at his hands to find that his skin had turned a blotched red. The blast had affected him.
“What the hell?” a confused look spread across his face.
He looked up and saw another blast being charged up. This time, he didn’t try taking the blast. He jumped out of the way and the blast hit the crane instead, with the crane exploding instantly.
Dang landed hard on the ground some distance away from the smoke and stared into the smoke. He needed to know what he was dealing with.
He dug deep into his reserves of strength and clapped his hands together powerfully, generating a squalling wind that that dispersed much of the smoke, at least enough that he could see who or what had attacked him.
It was a humanoid machine, or at least that was what it looked like. The machine had two blue glowing areas - it's eyes and a spot on its chest, that had smoke coming off of it - which was no doubt the source if the two blasts that had been fired off. –no doubt the source of the two blasts that had been fired off. There were blades jutting out of the sentinel’s hands and tentacles protruding from its back.
Its metal body pulsed with an iridescent blue light. Dang knew at once that this was nothing he’d seen before. This had to be experimental military technology. But what was it doing here?
He tensed; aware this would be a different fight from what he was used to. He hadn’t gone against weapons of mass destruction before.
“What do you want?” he asked.
The sentinel’s eyes moved up and down as though it was scanning Dang and then it spoke. “Threat Identified. Exterminating.”
The sentinel’s chest cannon lit up dangerously and it fired another blast. Dang then decided to try something risky. He stood his ground and extended his right hand forward, waiting, timing it, getting a feel of the energy within the blast.
Once he had what he needed, he sucked in a deep breath and whispered "Resonate.”
When the blast hit him, he felt no pain. It was more like the blast had become a part of him, its energy was absorbed by his body. He stared at his hands to find that they were pulsing with a dazzling blue light.
He looked up at the robot and spat angrily. “You’re dead.”
He charged forward then, moving much quicker than he thought he would. He slammed into the robot and sent it flying into the air, grabbed onto its leg and smashed it right back down against the ground before spinning around, hurling it in the direction of the crane.
The sentinel’s propulsion engines kicked in midair and it hovered for a moment before flying right at Dang.
Dang leaped at the sentinel to meet it midair, readying up a punch. He swung once he was close enough to the sentinel, hitting it right in the face, but the robot didn’t budge. Instead, it countered with a powerful blow that knocked Dang to the ground.
The sentinel landed on Dang’s chest with immense force that sent him deeper into the ground and stabbed at him with the blades jutting from either hand. Dang moved his head quickly enough to avoid the blade going through his eyes, before striking at them, breaking them off and kicking the sentinel to launch upward.
He hurried to his feet and sprinted towards the sentinel, charging up his punch this time with the same blue energy he’d resonated. This time, when his fist connected with the sentinel’s stomach, it left a smoking hole there, and the sentinel’s eyes flickered for a moment before going off.
Dang hurled the destroyed sentinel at the ground and landed right next to it, crouching at once to examine it. He was hoping to find some sort of label or model number that might have given him a clue as to where it came from. But there was no such thing.
He reached for his phone, about to call the incident in to the authorities when there was another blinding light, although this one was accompanied by an intense shockwave that sent him sailing through the air. He hit the ground several feet away and rolled multiple times before coming to a stop.
Before he could rise to his feet, tentacles had wrapped around him and an excruciating shock ripped through his entire body, causing him to yell in agony.
He attempted to resonate but nothing worked.
“Exterminating,” the new sentinel said.
Then came another blinding light, and then a cold darkness swallowed him whole.